The opinion of the court was delivered by: DENISE COTE, District Judge

MEMORANDUM OPINION & ORDER

Plaintiffs Presbyterian Church of Sudan and Nuer Community
Development Services in U.S.A. ("Organizational Plaintiffs") are
suing in their individual capacities, as well as in a
representative capacity to redress injuries to their members. In
a letter dated April 28, 2005, defendant Talisman Energy, Inc.
("Talisman"), seeks a ruling that the Organizational Plaintiffs
do not have standing to sue on behalf of their members.*fn1
In a letter dated May 2, 2005, the plaintiffs argue that this question
has already been resolved in their favor and should not be
revisited.

Deciding whether an organization may sue on behalf of its
members requires the application of a familiar tripartite test
that upholds such standing where:

(a) [the organization's] members would otherwise have
standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests
it seeks to protect are germane to the organization's
purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the
relief requested requires the participation of
individual members in the lawsuit.

An intervening Second Circuit case sheds additional light on
the circumstances where "the relief requested requires the
participation of individual members in the lawsuit." Bano,
360 F.3d at 713. In an Alien Tort Statute case involving, among other
plaintiffs, organizations suing on behalf of members who were
injured in a toxic gas disaster at a chemical plant in India, the
court noted that because the claims involved "bodily harm and damage to real property" inflicted on individual
members, "[n]ecessarily, each of those individuals would have to
be involved in the proof of his or her claims." Id. at 714-15.
The organizational plaintiffs therefore failed to satisfy the
third prong of the test because "whatever injury may have been
suffered is peculiar to the individual member concerned, and both
the fact and extent of injury would require individualized
proof." Id. at 714 (citation omitted).

An Opinion of March 25, 2005 in this case denied the
plaintiffs' motion for class certification, holding that "the
only way to prove proximate causation is through individualized
proof." Presbyterian Church, 226 F.R.D. at 482. Consequently,
"[t]he plaintiffs will have to show with respect to each
individual class member that the injuries for which they are
claiming damages were actually caused by" the defendants' alleged
conduct. Id. Given the necessity for individual proof of
proximate causation in this case, the third prong of the test for
organizational standing in a representative capacity is not met.
Therefore, the Organizational Plaintiffs do not have standing to
sue on behalf of their members, and may only sue in their
individual capacities.

The plaintiffs emphasize that the March 19, 2003 Opinion held
that the Organizational Plaintiffs have standing to sue on behalf
of their members. That Opinion based its decision, in part, on
the fact that "the instant action is a class action pursuant to
Fed.R.Civ.P. 23." Presbyterian Church, 244 F. Supp. 2d at 333. Given that new Second Circuit precedent exists
on this point and that this action may not proceed as a class
action pursuant to Rule 23, Fed.R.Civ.P., it is appropriate to
exercise the Court's inherent discretion to revisit the question
of the Organizational Plaintiffs' standing to sue in a
representative capacity. See Aramony v. United Way of
America, 254 F.3d 403, 410 (2d Cir. 2001).

SO ORDERED.

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